


you got blood on your hands (i think it's my own)

by wolfchester



Series: heartbreak warfare [3]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Sadness, Violence, bucky and natasha making out, everything in between, happiness, i put my own spin on it with my own headcanons and stuff, kind of different from the comics, natasha romanov origin story, sex but not graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:49:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2531348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfchester/pseuds/wolfchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does a ghost dream of? How can a machine have a heartbeat?</p><p>"Do you know the saying: 'An hour of life is still life'? You are not a child anymore. I will say a blessing for you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	you got blood on your hands (i think it's my own)

**Author's Note:**

> (i am very familiar with the comics but for the purpose of writing this and fulfilling my buckynat/black widow headcanons, liberty has been taken with certain events, dates, etc. like nat's time in the red rooms. please don't kill me.)

* * *

  

_'Cause I've run every red light on memory lane_

_I've seen desperation explode into flames_

_And I don't want to see it again_

 

* * *

 

This is the story of the making and unmaking of Natalia Romanova, the Black Widow.

 

* * *

 

Natalia has no orders to eliminate the child, only it's father. A bullet to the head while he sleeps in his bed. The child wakes and screams.

"Не смотрите, ребенка. Все это скоро закончится." [Don't look, child. It will all be over soon.]

  


That night she dreams of a different time. In this dream she is young, before the Department X and the Red Rooms and Black Widow. Before learning how to shoot a man in the chest to guarantee immediate death and how to throw seventeen types of knives at moving targets. She is young and with a woman who must be her mother. There is a street, a snow-covered street. And a soldier, an old man, a gun.

 _Don't look at the blood, Natalia. Don't look at the body. Keep your head down. Look at the snow. Look at the snow._ A gunshot. A scream. _The snow, Natalia, the_ snow. _Don't look up._ Footprints in the snow. Bloodstains in the snow.

(There's the thing with humans: no matter if they're black, white, or yellow; they always bleed red.)

Natalia remembers being haunted by the image of the old man lying spread-eagled in the cold, blood seeping from the bullet wound in his head. She could have no idea of the things she would see in the years to come.

  


The Red Room comes after that. She learns to fight for the Motherland. Learns her way around knives and guns and lengths of wire until they fit in her hands like gloves. Learns how to slice a man's trachea in one simple move, how to use her body to gain information, how to walk silently on the balls of her feet, how to speak accentless French, German, English. She learns that the Americans are the enemy, not to be trusted, much less _loved_.

Then they bring in Codename Winter Soldier. He fights against her in a ring while her superiors watch on, looking to see if she will fail. If he will break her collarbone before she can catch her footing, or, if by some miracle, she survives. She surely can't beat him, no, of _course_ not, because she is a fifteen-year-old girl and he is a soldier - a machine - with a metal arm and years of combat training.

She can’t outfight him, but Natalia knows she can outwit him. She does. Stares at him a little too long, catches his gaze. (Even at fifteen, she is beautiful, and he sees this. He is barely human, but he’s not dead.) Quirks an eyebrow, then vaults over the top of him, removing the gun in a holster on his back as she does so. It all happens in a fraction of a second, and he barely has time to turn around before she’s facing him with a gun raised to his forehead and a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

“я думал, что ты лучший?” [I thought you were the best?] she says.

The Winter Soldier replies with a grimace that almost looks like a smile. For the first time, Natalia sees an emotion in those dark eyes of his. She sees pride. Yet he knows she can do better.

She does.

  


Two years later and she meets the Winter Soldier again. He has been sent to train Natalia and twelve other girls. One of them will become the Black Widow. Natalia is determined that it will be her.

They spar like last time they met, but unlike the previous occasion, there is no guard standing over them, no commander to impress. It is just the man with the metal arm and the girl with the red hair.

His dark hair is longer than when she last saw him. It looks like it’s been cut with a shaving razor, the way it falls jaggedly into his eyes. She has a fleeting thought that it should really be cut by someone.

He looks at her with human eyes. He sees her like he did for that one brief second all those years ago. There is pride in his eyes when she slides underneath his legs and manages to disarm him at the same time. Slips the two knives on the inside of his left leg out of their holders and waits on the other side of him, posed with the knives twirling around her ring fingers.

“я думал, что ты лучший?” [I thought you were the best?] Natalia smirks, echoing the words spoken in what seems like a lifetime ago.

She barely has time to think before she finds herself pinned on the cold concrete underneath the Winter Soldier's body, his arms trapping her hands above her head so she can't move. His face is close to hers, so close, so dangerously close.

"I am the best, sweetheart," the Soldier whispers in English. He looks at her with eyes filled not with pride, but with a yellowing glint Natalia recognises as lust. She has seen it many times in the eyes of men she has seduced to gain information, then murdered in cold blood. Yet she has never seen those eyes on a man like this.

The Soldier grins, bares his teeth in a way that is both frightening and beautiful. His raggedy hair falls into her face, tickles her collarbone. His metal fingers are hot on the sensitive skin of her inner wrist."I'll show you one day just how good I can be."

  


One night, three days before her eighteenth birthday, she finds herself in the Winter Soldier’s room.

She doesn't know exactly how it happened, only that his touch is burning fire of her skin and his kisses are the water she needs to live. His mouth is on her collarbone, sucking a mark into the dip of her skin. Then he's kissing the side of her mouth, underneath her left ear, her forehead, her lips, her teeth, and _how can he be everywhere at once?_ His cybernetic hand is cold to the touch, and when he reaches up her shirt, she gasps into his mouth at the contact of the metal to her skin.

He pulls back from her neck and look down at her with a worried expression, something she has never seen on a man so stoic and dangerous. His pupils are dilated, mouth parted, lips full.

“я не хочу, чтобы уничтожить тебя.” [I don’t want to ruin you.]

“My darling,” she replies in English. “Do you really think you can ruin me?” Her eyes are sad but she holds no regret for the life she has lived so far. No contempt for the Rooms that have made her who she is today. (That comes later.)

The Soldier smiles a wicked grin, and leans in to kiss her again. Feverishly, dangerously, without abandon. He knows what will happen to them if they are found out, but he doesn’t care. Just lets himself be swept away by this young woman with creamy white thighs and flaming red hair. With skin so soft to touch, yet he knows those hands have snapped many a neck, and that those dark eyes have seen horrors only the Soldier can match.

  


Natalia has never been with a man like the American. She is not a virgin in the slightest - her job description requires her to freely use her body to gain information - but the way the Soldier touches her makes her feel brand new all over again. He is soft at one point, teasing her and making her wait when she wants nothing else than to let go. Then he is rough, pulling at her hair and leaving marks on her skin where a metal finger has pressed a little too hard.

In all of these things, there is a different kind of light behind his eyes. He looks at her not as an asset but as a human being, a beautiful young woman who has seen too many ugly things. Who will live with the nightmares and dance with the ghosts of people she has killed for the rest of her life. He can do nothing to stop this cycle of pain, but he can alleviate it for an hour or two.

The Winter Soldier knows the red-haired girl only pretends to be strong. That underneath those calloused hands and graceful curve of the neck, she is a frightened child watching a man being shot dead in the snow. He knows this because he feels it, too, on nights when a demon (angel?) named Steve haunts his dreams, and a sharp prick in the back of his mind tells him he wasn’t always an empty-eyed machine.

When she’s kissing his neck like this and dancing her fingers across his chest like that, he feels human again. Just for a moment.

  


After, they lie tangled together in a sweat-slick embrace, her head on his chest and his fingers in her hair. Natalia starts to drift off into a fitful sleep, but the Soldier’s voice disrupts her.

"James Buchanan Barnes," he says, letting her flame-coloured hair slip lazily through his metal fingers.

"What does that mean?" she whispers, eyes still half-shut.

"I don't know. I don't remember." He pauses for a long moment. Sighs, then carefully runs a flesh finger down her cheek. "I think it is my name."

"Natalia Alianovna Romanova," she replies. "That is mine."

"Natalia," he grins, testing out the name on his tongue. "Natalia."

She sits upright and leans in to kiss him on the nose, and in the back of his mind he thinks that it is the sweetest touch he's ever felt. "James," she whispers. "James. I like it. It suits you." She smiles. " _James_." After a moment, she crawls over so that she's resting on top of him, legs on either side of his chest, leaning down so his face is in her hands. "Now, are you going to kiss me again, James?"

He needs no more persuasion.

  


_The Kremlin has eyes everywhere_ , he says before slipping through her window into the night. _Be careful, снежок._

The Kremlin has eyes everywhere.

They capture James as soon as he hits the ground after climbing down the side of her building. Find two strands of red hair on his shirt and a love bite on his neck. (He has not been careful enough, and now he will pay the price.)

The Winter Soldier is put back into stasis the day Natalia Romanova turns eighteen.

Two days later she becomes the Black Widow.

  


But not before she must prove herself one last time.

Her last mission as a child of the Red Rooms takes place in Chicago, 1946.

She has been ordered to destroy a hospital housing three of the KGB’s most wanted American spies.

 _There are civilians in here!_ Her subconscious screams as she sets the place alight with a well-aimed flamethrower shot. _They have done nothing wrong!_

She could have just snuck into the hospital dressed as a nurse and put cyanide in the three men's drinks, Natalia thinks. Instead they tell her to burn the whole thing to the ground.

 _This is a test, this is a test, this is a test._ They want to see if she is capable of the graceful cruelty required of a Black Widow. To see if her claws are as sharp as they say they are. If her teeth can sink down hard enough. _Drown out the screams, Natalia. This is a test._

The sound of a fire engine siren fills the air. Natalia sticks around long enough to see gurneys loaded with burnt bodies being carted out of the building. A child missing an arm collapses on the asphalt road as he is led out of the hospital. _Think of the children, Natalia! The children…_

These children never had to live like she did. Never had to worry about their next meal or exchange sex for information. Have never heard the sound of a neck snapping under their hands. They are American children, from rich American families, and they deserve to burn.

 _This is a test. This is a test._ James’ face is seared into the back of her mind. She can hear every lash of the whip, every breath of his screams as they beat him for being with her. For loving her, even for just a moment.

_Do you really think you can ruin me?_

Eighteen years old, and she burned the whole damn hospital.

  


Twenty-one and she finds the man who killed her mother before she was taken as an orphan into the Red Rooms at the age of four. She has spent thirteen years trying to track down this man, who she only remembers as having long brown hair and a very noticeable long, red scar on his right cheek.

His name is Georgiy Ulyanov, and he was a Soviet soldier in the war. Killed her mother in Stalingrad because she was caught stealing apples to feed her young daughter.

 _Look at the snow, Natalia. Not at the blood. The_ snow _._

The Widow finds him in a run-down bar in San Francisco.

She has hunted for less. She has killed for less. But never with as much pleasure.

“My name is Natalia Romanova. Seventeen years ago you killed my mother. Now I’m going to kill you.”

Red drips from her hands, coats strands of her hair and the bottom of her shoes, buries itself under her fingernails. Red blood, red rooms, red dead bodies in red streets, red eyes, red hands; black heart.

  


_Do you know the saying: 'An hour of life is still life'? You are not a child anymore. I will say a blessing for you._

  


It is 1956 when she meets the Winter Soldier again. Natalia is 28 but still looks 19 (she has to thank the Widow serum for that). They are paired together on a mission to eliminate a target in the Welsh countryside.

He does not remember her. She does not remember him. But in the aftermath of the successful mission, in the adrenalin rush of a victory, he touches her in their motel room and it's like her skin is set on fire once again.

The Soldier's fingers map her skin like he's reliving childhood memories, like he's travelling down an old road that he used to know. Like he's been here before. He kisses the curve of her neck, the dip of her collarbone, and it all comes rushing back. _Blood. Snow. Bullets. Footprints._

_James._

"James?" she whispers frantically, pulling away from his mouth. Heartbeat loud in her ears. "James? Is that you?"

The Soldier's eyes show no emotion at first. "Who the hell is James?" he says, dark eyebrows furrowing.

Natalia's stomach drops. Of course, of _course_. She forgot. She should have known better. Assets are always brain-wiped after a mission. She has been wiped, too. Not as often as the Soldier, however enough that she can speak fluent Mandarin, Swedish and Gaelic but have no memory of learning the languages at all. Machines like the Soldier - they are different. She remembers seeing the Winter Soldier in stasis shortly after they last slept together. That was so many _years_ ago. You can forgive her for forgetting. (She doesn't forgive herself.)

But the Black Widow is determined. (She wouldn't be here if she wasn't.) "James," she says, reaching out to touch his face. "James. Look at me."

He is confused, his hair falling into his eyes and his mouth set in a grimace. "James Buchanan Barnes," Natalia says. "That is your name."

"James Barnes..." the Soldier turns the name over and over again in his mouth. "How did you know this?"

The Widow smiles, a genuine smile, rarely seen on her beautiful face. "You told me, many years ago. My name is Natalia Romanova."

"Natalia..." James says. "Why does that sound so familiar?

"I loved you once," she whispers.

There is no spark of recognition in the Soldier's eyes, no miraculous memory. Just a sad smile and: "I wish I remembered loving you, Natalia Romanova."

 _I wish you did, too_ , the Widow thinks as she lowers her mouth back on his.

  


It is not until afterwards that Natalia realises he was speaking in English the entire time.

  


1983\. Manhattan, New York City. The Winter Soldier has escaped from the KGB. The Black Widow is sent to retrieve him.

She finds him in a coffee shop on the Upper East Side, dressed in rugged clothes and sporting a scraggly beard. He looks entirely different to the rest of the customers in the cafe, and this is what first draws her eye. She knows this is the Soldier because of the vacant look on his face, the scar below his right eye, the way he holds his coffee cup clutched in his hands like he could somehow use it as a weapon, how his dark eyes flit to the entrance of the coffee shop on occasion, watching. (Not to mention the gleaming of silver peeking out from his coat sleeve.)

Natalia sits down beside him after ordering a latte for herself (when in Rome, do as the Romans do).

"You ran away," she says to the figure hunched over his cup. It's not a question; it's a statement. But not an accusation: Lord knows she would have run away by now if she could.

He doesn't respond, so Natalia keeps talking. "I've been ordered to bring you home."

Still no response. Not even a nod or a grumble of acceptance. The barista brings over coffee and Natalia downs it in one swig, ignoring the way the hot beverage scalds her throat.

"прийти сейчас," [Come now] she says finally, "давайте вас домой." [Let us get you home.]

The Soldier follows the Widow out of shop, leaves his cup covered in dirty fingerprints on the counter.

  


They do not go "home" straight away. Instead, Natalia makes a stop at the KGB safe house in Brooklyn to get the Soldier cleaned up and both of them fed before a long plane ride home.

Neither of them say a word until James is out of the shower and sitting on the couch with a towel around his waist. Natalia takes one of her knives and begins to work on James' hair, hacking at the matted brown mess and watching as it falls in clumps on the floor.

An hour of this, of Natalia playing hairdresser and James sitting silent and still, before one of them speaks.

"I remember everything," the Soldier says in English.

Natalia's hands still in his hair. "What?"

"Everything. All the people I killed, all the things I did. I remember it all and I wish I didn't."

She had heard of stories back home, that the Winter Soldier had broken his conditioning and escaped to America, supposedly in search of his old life. The truth is staring her right in the face in the form of a sad, sad man.

"I came here, to New York, looking for something," he continues. "For someone. I thought I could find myself here. But yesterday I went to the place where my apartment building used to be, and there was a- a, uh, a Wal-?"

She grins. "Walmart."

"Right. A Walmart. And I realised that I can never get that life back again, no matter how hard I try." He sighs, a heavy, sorrow-laden exhale of breath that speaks more than any words could. "I stopped looking after that. And then you found me in that shop. The coffee was disgusting, by the way."

Natalia has never heard this man speak as many words before, and she's almost stunned speechless. "I'm sorry," she says.

 _I'm sorry that this all happened to you_ , she means. _I'm sorry that I don't know how to help you._

They're silent then for a long time. Natalia helps James wash out his hair again, touches up the sides of his haircut with a shaving razor, gives him some clean clothes to put on. She makes him some eggs on toast and he eats it like he hasn’t seen food in days.

Natalia sits opposite him at the kitchen table, watching him eat. Her gaze is strong, unfocused. She picks him apart with her eyes, watches every move he makes. The Soldier is difficult to read, but sometimes he will glance up at her with something brighter in his eyes. Something hopeful.

Images flit through her mind: Natalia meeting the Winter Soldier for the first time, the feel of his fierce, adrenalin-filled kisses, seeing his body frozen in a metal tube.

_The Kremlin has eyes everywhere. Be careful, снежок._

“Do you remember me? Our time together, when I was young?” Her voice is soft, cautious.

The Soldier stops eating for a moment, puts his fork down and looks her in the eyes. “Yeah. I remember everything, Natalia. And you were the one good thing in all of it.”

For the first time in her life, the Black Widow _blushes_. Her cheeks go bright red and she ducks her head, hoping that she will be hidden behind her hair.

A hand reaches across the wooden table to grasp her own. Calloused fingers circle patterns onto her skin. "I remember you, Natalia. I remember it all."

She looks up then, a sad smile on her face. "I'm sorry. Those times weren't exactly worth remembering."

"True, for some memories. I can't sleep at night sometimes because of the ghosts. But then I see you, and I'm reminded of the good. Everything has a silver lining. I'm just trying to find mine."

His metal hand reaches out to touch her cheek. The gesture is so comforting, so _human_ , that Natalia forgets for a moment that his fingers aren't made of flesh and blood.

"James-" she whispers, pressing a kiss into the palm of his hand. "James, we have to leave in the morning. We can't-"

She is interrupted by his cold mouth on hers, and his fingers are in her hair and she can barely breathe. But for the first time in a long while, she feels alive. Feels hope.

The kiss isn't beautiful, or romantic, or lovely, or any of those things. It's fierce and messy, passionate and confused. It's all teeth and lips and hot breath and mumbles of " _I'm sorry_ " and " _I found you_ ". His cybernetic arm wraps around Natalia's waist and lifts her into the air. Her breath catches in her throat when she realises that he's backing her towards the bed. She feels like a goddamn teenager when he starts kissing down her neck and she lets out a quick breath.

"James-" she says in between kisses. "James, I-"

"Shhh..." he whispers, cutting her off with a kiss. "Quiet."

Natalia begins to protest the silence but is halted by James reaching up and pulling off his shirt and god isn't that a sight to see. There's scars left by American bullets in a few choice places on his chest, on his flesh arm. A distorted white line crosses his torso from hipbone to hipbone, a knife wound healed. The wires that connect his cybernetic arm to the rest of his body can just be seen under the skin on his shoulder. She reaches out a finger to trace them across from his collarbone to the beginning of the cold metal. She's missed this. It's been so _long_.

Clothes are discarded on the floor, the blinds are drawn, and it's only mid-day but neither of them care.

“I missed you,” she whispers in his ear as his hands travel southward. “I missed you so goddamn much.”

He presses hot, wet kisses to her stomach and mumbles against her belly button: “I missed you, too, снежок.”

Natalia smiles at the endearment, followed by a gasp as his metal hand comes in contact with the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.

She can feel James’ smile against her skin. “James,” she says. “James.” Natalia pulls his head back up to her mouth, sees the lust in his eyes. Kisses him once, twice, three times, then mumbles against his lips: “I loved you once.” Repeating history. _I think I can love you again._

James pauses, pulls away from her mouth, and brushes her hair away from her forehead. “I remember, Natalia. I remember all of it.”

The Widow mouth upturns into a sly, wicked grin as she trails her fingers carefully down his torso and whispers in his ear: “Do you remember _this_?”

She hears his breath catch in his throat as she kisses a line down his jaw. Hears the words: "I'm not too sure. Care to remind me?"

The Widow does just that.

  


There's a plane to catch in the morning. Questions to be asked. She's not going to see him again after this. Not for a long, long time. Perhaps never.

“They’re going to wipe me again, aren’t they?”

_Yes._

_It will hurt. It will last._

_You will scream, you will bleed._

_You will forget my face: my eyes, my hair, my lips._

_(I’m sorry.)_

"I need you," she says, avoiding the question. _I love you_ , she thinks. It's true. She loves this cold, dark monster of a man. A man with a heart coloured black with a silver lining. Everybody has a silver lining, the Widow thinks, even those who have killed innocent children in the name of the Motherland and who have seen more blood flow than rivers run. Everyone deserves a silver lining, a second chance. The Winter Soldier is no different.

“I know,” he says. “Мне очень жаль, моя дорогая.” [I’m sorry, my darling.] He buries his face in her hair, and Natalia feels a single drop of saltwater run down her cheek. She squeezes her eyes shut. She is too full of Russian pride to let him see her cry. “мне жаль, что у него не было до конца этот путь.” [I wish it didn’t have to end this way.]

“это не так, моя дорогая.” [It doesn’t, my dear.] She pulls away and reaches out a hand to run her fingers through his hair. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

  


Everyone burns.

 

They burn in fire. They burn in blood. They burn in dreams.

 

And it never ends.

  


Natalia has no orders to eliminate the child, only it's father. A bullet to the head while he sleeps in his bed. The child wakes and screams.

"Не смотрите, ребенка. Все это скоро закончится." [Don't look, child. It will all be over soon.]

 _Don't look at the blood, Natalia. Don't look at the body. Keep your head down. Look at the snow. Look at the snow._ A gunshot. A scream. _The snow, Natalia, the_ snow. _Don't look up_. Footprints in the snow. Bloodstains in the snow.

  


The year is 2014 and the Red Rooms are a far-away memory for the Black Widow. She is Natasha Romanoff now, a special agent for SHIELD and a member of the Avengers. There are no more nightmares, no more ghosts. She’s learnt to quiet the screams, quiet the desperation and the guilt.

She is still the Black Widow, but this time she is using her skills for _good_. It feels good, too. Like every life she saves is avenging a life she once ended. Natasha’s got a new set of friends, including but not limited to: a man who flies around in a homemade iron suit, a god, a giant green monster, and an all-American super soldier. They’re an interesting bunch, that’s for sure. They don’t always get along well, but they do their jobs just fine.

The year is 2014, and there is a masked man with a metal arm shooting at Natasha Romanoff from an overpass in Washington, D.C.

The Winter Soldier is alive and kicking- well, _shooting_. He hasn’t lost his aim in all the years since she’s seen him last. She’s impressed, even when she’s running to save her life.

He manages to shoot her in the shoulder before she can take cover behind an SUV on the street. It hurts like hell but it’s nothing to speak for the confusion she feels in her mind. He could have killed her with one shot. She’d seen him do just that many times to various marks over the years. She knows he is capable of it. Why didn’t he?

Instead, he shoots her in the shoulder, where it hurts but she will most definitely live.

It almost makes her _angry_. That he could have killed her but he didn’t. And she wants to know _why_.

  


It’s six long and agonising months before she is able to do just that.

Four months before S.H.I.E.L.D. (or, rather, what’s left of it) manages to track down the Winter Soldier, shut him down, and bring him in.

“Bringing him in” means four weeks of careful mental re-stabilization, in which scientists and doctors try to unravel Zola’s experiments and Pierce’s brainwashing from James’ mind, try to restore him to the man he once was. He never speaks, nothing more than occasional grunts and murmurs. Steve knows he can speak English, remembers “ _You are my mission_ ” with tears in his eyes. James is not being held against his will at any point in this. Doctor Banner makes it clear many times that he can leave whenever he likes. (They really hope he doesn’t, because he’s still the most dangerous assassin they've ever seen, and to have him wandering the streets would likely be a grave danger to society.)

He doesn't try to escape but he does make his dislike of the situation clear at most times. The Soldier looks at the world through a dark veil, stares at the scientists through his mop of brown hair (Natasha has a fleeting thought that it should really be cut by someone), wriggles in his chair and flinches when the doctors put him under their microscopes.

But the Soldier doesn't scream, doesn't fight, just tries to avoid everyone's gaze as much as he possibly can.

At the end of the seven weeks, his doctors announce that he is ready (well, as ready as you can be with decades of brainwashing) to be reintegrated into society. This means housing him up on his own floor at the Stark Tower, where he can be under constant surveillance at all times, yet free to figure out his new life for himself.

Steve, of course, is ecstatic at the fact that his best friend is coming home again, even if this so-called best friend can barely remember anything about the friendship between them. Tony is only really interested Barnes' metal arm, and says on a regular basis that he "can't wait until the dude gets his head on straight" so he can examine the prosthetic for real. The other Avengers tend to regard Barnes with curiosity, yet have all heard the horror stories and keel a safe distance from him at all times.

Natasha, however, is equal parts cautious and joyful at the prospect of James' homecoming. Cautious because she has seen first hand the damage this man can do to the human body (although they removed all weapons from his person when they first captured him). Joyful because maybe, just maybe, she will get her James back. She's not holding out for any incredible miracle, but perhaps they could become friends.

  


_Bucky Barnes._

Natasha almost laughed when she found out that Steve's "Bucky" was her James.

How coincidental is it that the one man who was the most important part of her life as the Black Widow was also the most important part of Steve's?

  


James - or Bucky, as she's supposed to call him now, to help with his rehabilitation - adjusts to life as a normal human being with delicacy. Steve visits him every day and keeps Natasha and the others posted on his progress: " _He remembered Stacey from the 3rd grade today!_ " or " _Yesterday he remembered that steak was my favourite barbecue meat!_ " - little tidbits that keep Steve occupied.

Natasha doesn't talk to him - _properly_ , not just simple "hellos" in the hallway - until a few months into his stay at the Stark Tower. She's making herself breakfast in the kitchen on the seventh floor - pancakes with maple syrup, fruit, and yoghurt. She doesn't hear Bucky come in until he's standing right behind her.

"My ma used to make us pancakes on Sunday mornings before church. Steve loved 'em," Bucky says, and Natasha almost jumps out of her skin, flipping around with a frying pan full of pancake in her hand.

"What are you doing?" she says, breathless. Not scared. Just...surprised.

His voice is the same as she always remembered. Deep, gravelly, a touch of smooth honey that sends shivers up her spine. He smiles cautiously at her. "I- I smelt the food and I wanted to come see if I could have some." He reaches out a hand to take the pan out from hers. Their fingers brush momentarily and there’s no fireworks, no cliche nonsense - there’s just a feeling of _this is good, this is right, this is home_. “I can help, if you want. I used to be quite good at flipping pancakes back in the day,” Bucky says with a small smile.

Natasha just stands there, watching him with mouth slightly open, astounded. The transformation in this man is _incredible_. Yes, he still looks the same as he did 30 years ago, just with more lines under his eyes and extra scars on his body. But there’s a change in his eyes. There’s a light behind them that she’s never seen before.

Bucky notices her speechlessness and turns away from the stove to face her. "You look like you've seen a ghost." He tries to smile but it comes out more like a grimace.

She reaches up to touch his face, eyes wide and lips parted. "I think maybe I have."

"I remember you," he says. "I remember everything. Again." A short laugh. "It seems I'm always trying to remember something or another."

She smiles, dropping her hand back to her side. "What do you remember?"

A pause. "The last time I saw you. In Brooklyn. We had to catch a plane the next morning. It was somewhere in 1980-"

"83," she finishes. "It was in 1983."

"1983. That was the last time. Until Washington."

"You shot me." She points to the scar on her shoulder, exposed by her black tank top.

Instinctively, he reaches out to touch it, then pauses mid-air and retracts his hand. "I- I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-"

Natasha shakes her head. "No, no. It's okay."

He ducks his head, smiles sheepishly. Natasha takes a step towards him. “Do you really remember everything?”

He nods once. “Yes. I told you. Everything.”

Suddenly, Bucky can see a playful spark lighting up behind Natasha’s eyes, something he recognised from their time together when they were much, much younger.

“ _Everything_?” she repeats, a hand going up to touch his face again, fingertips tracing along his cheekbones, the outline of his lips, his eyebrows, forehead wrinkles.

Bucky leans down, closing the gap between them, and whispering against her lips: “Everything.”

It’s been so long since either of them had shared a kiss, but they seem to fit back together again like puzzle pieces. The kiss is natural, smooth, delicate. Bucky’s hand comes to rest behind Natasha’s head, tilting her mouth towards him. Her fingers run through the short hair at the nape of his neck, sending shivers up his spine.

They kiss for a long moment until the smell of smoke starts to fill the air. “Goddamnit,” Natasha whispers, breaking away from Bucky’s lips. “We left the pan on!”

Bucky laughs, trying to waft away the smoke with his hands while Natasha empties the burnt-to-a-crisp pancake into the garbage. He catches her by the waist as she turns around, pulling her in for another kiss. She grins into his mouth, savouring the feeling of his strong hands around her waist once more.

  


You would think 30 years had changed the two assassins so much they wouldn’t be able to recognise each other, and that is partly true. Natasha doesn’t know this “Bucky”. She’s never seen the smile he reserves only for Steve, for his best friend. Never seen him as a young boy, playing catch with his sister in the street. She doesn’t recognise the full belly laugh he gives when he’s dead drunk and Sam tells him a joke he heard once, a lame pun about horses and bars.

But she did know James, and she can remember seeing some of these Bucky-like qualities in that quiet, dangerous shell of a man when she was 17, 26, 48. She can remember the smile he gave her when she kissed him for the first time, the laugh he had when she told him “ _you can’t ruin me_.”

He is Bucky Barnes, and he is James, and he is the Winter Soldier, and he is Steve Rogers’ best friend, and he is Natasha’s мой дорогой, and he is a _survivor_.

Everyone deserves a silver lining, a second chance. Bucky Barnes is no different. And maybe, just maybe, Natasha thinks, he has finally found it.

  


Three days after the pancake debacle, and Bucky and Natasha find themselves sitting outside Stark Tower on the ground floor, sharing a carton of lukewarm Chinese food between them.

"I don't know what to call you now," she smiles. "James, or...Bucky?" Natasha laughs. "Bucky. Such a silly name."

"Hey!" he grins. "It's a childhood nickname, okay? Steve gave it to me.”

They sit there on the concrete step for a while, letting the cool night air brush over them, listening to the constant hustle of the city below.

Then James clears his throat: "I don't know what I want to be called anymore. I'm not Bucky anymore, haven't been for a long time. It feels wrong to call myself that again. Bucky Barnes...he's a whole different person. Bucky Barnes died when he fell off that train. But James is...it reminds me of the Winter Soldier. Yet it also reminds me of you. And maybe that's something worth remembering."

Natasha smiles and lets him put his arm around her. "James it is, then."

He kisses the top of her head and pulls her closer into his side. "James it is."

  


Seeing James again, the _real_ James Buchanan Barnes, stirs up old memories; some to be treasured, others to be forgotten.

The ghosts she tries to forget whisper to her all night as she attempts to sleep, taunting, haunting, hunting her down: _All those people, Natasha. You killed all of them_. She can see their faces. A politician who knew too much. A woman in the wrong place at the wrong time. A scientist and his wife and child. Two men in the Saudi Arabian desert, bleeding out onto the sand. A young boy crying for his mother.

_Footprints in the snow. Bloodstains in the snow._

She is not a child anymore, and no one has ever said a blessing for her.

The voices of the dead echo in her mind:

 

_All of us, Natasha. You killed all of us._

_Does it hurt you, Natasha? Does it hurt you as much as you hurt us?_

_You deserve to die. You are nothing but Soviet scum. Blood on your hands. Bullets in our brains._

_Where is your heart? Did it die when you took your first human life? Did you feel it crumble to ashes as you watched a hospital filled with innocent people do the same?_

_Burning, burning, burning red. Your ledger is dripping with blood. So many names on your list. You can't erase them, Natasha. How can you ever be forgiven?_

_What have you_ ever _done to earn redemption?_

The Widow rocks back and forth on her heels, crouched in a ball on her bedroom floor. _I'm trying. I'm trying to be worthy. Please. Make it stop. Make it stop!_

There is no relief, no ceasing of the pain. Every slash of the knife, every shot of the gun, every snap of a neck. She hears them all.

_Make. It. Stop!_

 

_Do you hear us, Natalia? Can you hear our screams? You think you are worthy? You think you can ever be forgiven? Your hands are stained, little Widow._

 

 _Don't look at the blood, Natalia. Don't look at the body. Keep your head down. Look at the snow. Look at the_ _snow_.

 

Maybe in the future there will be James to take her in his arms like he used to, to kiss away the pain. Or maybe he will just sit with her on the concrete floor and say: "I don't know what faces you see in your mind, but I will hold you until they stop calling to you."

But her apartment is empty, and the floor is cold. The voices don't stop until the sun rises the next morning.

  


The New Year of 2015 is when James unofficially moves in to Natasha’s floor at the Stark Tower. Of course, he still has his own bedroom, but finds sleeping next to Natasha a hundred times more effective in halting the nightmares he still has than anything Tony Stark’s experimental medicine or two pills of aspirin can do.

James still has dreams, nightmares, of _before_. When he has one, he thrashes around in his bed, punches anything in sight, screams until his lungs are sore. But he never knows when Natasha is having a nightmare because she doesn't make a sound.

She will lie there stiffly for hours before he has the sense to wake up and hold her to his chest. She doesn't cry - the only time he has ever seen her cry was back in the old days, after the guards had beaten him for sleeping with her. Back then, she had been the one to comfort him, to kneel beside him and clean his wounds as best as she could. Whispered to him in the cold of the morning: "It's going to be okay."

Now, he is the one who holds her as she thrashes in her sleep. She whispers names, places, and phrases over and over again, the most common one being "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

After half an hour of this quiet disturbance, Natasha seems to have stilled in sleep. James takes this opportunity to stroke her hair softly, himself drifting back to sleep. Then he notices her shoulders shaking, and he turns her face towards his to find her cheeks streaked with tears, eyes bloodshot, angry and red.

“What have I become?” she whimpers. “What have I become?!” Her voice starts to rise in anger and in pain, her body quivering in his grasp. "Have you seen what they have done to me, James? Do you see what they have made me into?!"

He says nothing, just continues to hold her as tight as he possibly can while she struggles in his arms, as she screams her sorrows into the skin of his shoulder. Because he sure as hell knows what she is feeling. The actions of the Winter Soldier, the things he has done with his hands, the blood he has spilled. It will stay with him forever. And so will the memories for Natasha. You can defect to the enemy, you can repay everyone you ever wronged, you can pray for forgiveness over and over and over again. But you can't wash the blood off of your hands. There is no escaping the guilt.

You just learn ways to dull the pain.

Natasha wipes away a stray tear from her cheek, whispering now. "I see the faces every night. I hear them calling to me. I see my hands and the blood on them and I want to kill myself like I killed all those people, just so I don't have to see it anymore. For so many years I was a slave to the Communists, to the Motherland: a child of the Red Rooms. The Black Widow. I hate that name. I hate the meaning behind it. I hate the things the Black Widow has done, what the Soviets trained her to do. Did you know I was nine years old when I killed my first human? Nine years old, and I snapped her neck just like-" she makes a choke hold with her hands in the air and mimes squeezing and twisting, "-that. The things they made me do..."

She close her eyes and rests her head against James' shoulder. "But I have to love my Mother, don't I?"

James strokes her hair with his metal arm. The presence of the prosthetic only serves as a reminder to the both of them the horrors each have faced in their lifetimes. "You're safe now, Natalia. You're here and you're safe and I love you. The voices can't get you anymore."

Neither of them sleep that night. They just lay in each other's arms and share a common grief for people they once knew and things they once did.

_Misery loves company, don't you know?_

 

 

Natalia has no orders to eliminate the child, only it's father. A bullet to the head while he sleeps in his bed. The child wakes and screams.

"Не смотрите, ребенка. Все это скоро закончится." [Don't look, child. It will all be over soon.]

 _Don't look at the blood, Natalia. Don't look at the body. Keep your head down. Look at the snow. Look at the_ _snow_. A gunshot. A scream. _The snow, Natalia, the_ snow. _Don't look up_.

Footprints in the snow. Bloodstains in the snow.

Redemption in the snow.

 

**end.**

 

 


End file.
